Hon Deputy Chair, to Mr Darryl Worth, my former colleague on the committee, we've identified what you are saying. It's not only applicable to municipalities but to the provincial and national governments as well, and even to other departments. When you ask officials to do work, they give it to a service provider who does the work, and they come and give it to you as if they had done the work themselves. You find that in the process people don't develop and hone skills themselves, because they give the work to outsiders.
We are ensuring that what we are doing in local government specifically is a skills audit to look at what skills these municipalities have and, on the basis of that, what they are capable and not capable of doing. We are therefore looking at assisting them in ensuring that we reduce the number of consultants, that people are able to do the work, and that with those employed and paid with taxpayers' money we will get value for money. That's what we are doing.
In that respect, we therefore agree with you, hon Worth. We are saying it's something that we are turning around. We hope that before the end of the year we will have concluded a skills audit in every municipality in South Africa and, on that basis, we'll understand the gaps that must be filled and ensure that we deal with the situation. But we want people to do the work themselves so that we get value for the money that we are paying. Thank you very much.